18
The Home Care Association of Florida
FEATURE
2.
ASSISTED LIVING
COMMUNITIES
Every Assisted Living Community (ALC)
reading this article is thanking me for
not calling them “facilities” (and you
shouldn’t either!). Many ALCs and
private home care companies view one
another as competitors, but this couldn’t
be further from the truth. Are there
some similarities in your services? Yes,
but are you going after the same client?
No, not necessarily. ALCs are best for
those individuals who need some basic
assistance with housekeeping, laundry,
meal preparation, social interaction, and
medication management. That’s really
all an ALC can cover. They also offer
assistance with bathing and dressing, but
this is very limited.
There are a handful of residents that
decline in health every month, to a
point where the Director of Nursing is
forced to have a difficult conversation
with the resident’s family members. The
conversation looks like this:
NURSING DIRECTOR
: “…Your
mother’s health has declined since she
first moved in here and is no longer
‘assisted living appropriate.’ We need to
find another place for her to live.”
And the ALC then gives the family
typically five or six days (sometimes less)
to find somewhere else for their loved one
to live. This is not a good conversation
to have, and many people don’t know
what to do or where to go from here.
Here is your referral: Any Director of
Nursing can and should outline just how
much care a resident needs in order to
remain in their ALC safely. Rather than
simply suggesting the resident leave,
the nursing director can instead offer
two options: (1) Relocate; or (2) Bring
in “X” amount of care for “Y” days a
week, every week so Mom can stay. It’s a
win-win for all parties involved. You get a
client, the resident gets to remain in the
place he/she has called home, and the
ALC gets to keep its resident. This will
help the ALC maintain its census instead
of constantly moving folks in and out, so
it helps them just as much as it does you.
Additionally, all residents are required to
pay to live in the ALC, so it’s likely they
are qualified, private-paying clients who
have the resources to investigate a wide
range of care options and scenarios.
3.
CERTIFIED HOME
HEALTH AGENCIES
Certified Home Health (HH) agencies
are probably the easiest referral sources
to tap into because they are caring for
people in the same place as you. There
are more HHs (skilled agencies which
accept Medicare and other insurances)
in Florida than most other states in
the country. Every networking event,
community gathering, health fair, and so
on, are flooded with marketing liaisons
from HHs. Take the time to set up a
one-on-one meeting with any of these
marketing representatives and discuss
working together. Upon your meeting,
ask him/her, “What’s your readmission
rate?” Their rate should be around the
national average, give or take 5%. Here’s
where you MUST calculate your rates,
(which should be considerably lower,
sub 5%), because every person whom
they feel will likely be readmitted to
the hospital must be referred to you.
This makes it easier on the HH’s end as
well. Anyone who is a “frequent flyer”
(a readmit or someone who’s been on
services prior to this admission within
the last six months) must be referred to
you automatically upon starting care.
By working with your HH counterparts,
not only are you getting clients, but
you’re also helping to reduce their
readmission numbers. They, in turn,
can leverage lower readmission rates to
increase their census from physicians,
SNFs, and hospitals, which will ultimately
feed you even more referrals. This is the
main reason why many HH agencies are
beginning to offer their own private duty
services, so the window of opportunity is
starting to close here. In the meantime,
many HHs still prefer to focus solely
on skilled care paid for by Medicare, so
focus on developing this collaborative,
working relationship with these types of
HH marketing representatives. Anything
you can do to help them lower their rates
will ultimately benefit them AND you!
If you are looking to grow your private
duty home care business, SNFs, ALCs
and HHs are three of the best referral
sources to focus your marketing efforts.
There’s no easy road to making the
connections with the right contacts and
getting into these places, but once you
do, you’ll grow your agency quickly and
have an abundance of clients coming
in. For information on how to tap into
these referral sources, please check out
where you
will find over 100 free videos discussing
these strategies. Good luck, have fun, and
happy hunting!
Steve “The Hurricane” is a speaker, trainer and
motivator for Hurricane Marketing Enterprises.
His firm helps health care businesses grow
through marketing, promoting, selling, networking,
and managing marketing personnel. He can
be contacted at 877-The-Expert or through
